Sunday, July 31, 2005

One of the arguments used against open access is the idea that people are not able to read and understand the research literature, but that rather they need mediation, for example consumer health literature. While creating and sharing information that translates the complexities of research literature into material that is easier to understand is absolutely laudable, taking away the right of the individual to make their own choice is censorship. This is a very basic intellectual freedom issue - it is the right of the individual to decide what they want to read. This applies just as much to the level of reading material, as it does to the topic.

Following is a message I posted to liblicense, which appeared on July 31. For the full discussion, see liblicense-l "Health Information Needs". Better yet - if you believe in intellectual freedom - join in, and help out!

To further support Kent Mulliner's point that mediation of health information should not be required:

The idea that the public needs mediation is not new. This idea, rather, was one of the obstacles to be overcome in order for literacy for the general population to be considered as a possibility. There was a time, in the history of even the most free of nations today, when the written word was considered fit only for the clergy, who would interpet for the masses. Even in much, more more recent times, there have been those who have adhered to just such a view. Witness, for example, the impact of the Taliban on the education of women in Afghanistan.

When people were illiterate, mediation was indeed necessary for the masses. Most people had no access to the literature, or to education; their only access to information was through mediation. As we have seen, once information and education become accessible, the vast majority are able to read.

As research literature becomes more accessible, the number of people who are able to make use of it will increase. Not that everyone will want to read at a research level, of course - it's just that, as Kent says, it is their right to do so, if they so choose. For that matter, open access will mean access to the educational system,, which could make it possible to advance the average scientific and information literacy skills of the population as a whole.

To me, this is a very fundamental intellectual freedom issue. Intellectual freedom means that the individual chooses for themselves what they will read. This includes not only topics, but reading level as well.

This is not to say that mediation cannot sometimes be helpful, and desired. At a recent conference in B.C., one of the librarians at Vancouver Public Library talked about their new role as "information counsellors". I can easily see a librarian taking on this role in the area of health information. It's not hard to imagine explaining to a person with an illness (or a family member) what their options are: consumer health, ranging from the simplest of brochures with the absolutebasics to more in-depth consumer health info, all the way to exploring the research literature. People should feel completely comfortable with whatever decision they make about the material they read: this is where the counselling aspect comes in.

Two very simple and obvious efficiencies - decreasing the salaries of a very few top executives at the American Chemical Society - to merely much higher than average levels - and focusing on publishing, rather than lobbying, could release funding for about 15 - 40 average sized journals (with the total number depending on efficiency).https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1974.html

Another tip for the ACS: sell the bars and real estate, put the money into an endowment fund for open access. (Thanks to Richard Poynder for pointing out the Information World article). https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1993.html. Other interesting discussion about the business practices of the American Chemical Society can be found in the SPARC Open Access Forum / Open Access News, June 2005.

Chemistry as a discipline and OA

In a nutshell, different disciplines are at various stages of implementing open access. Among the hard sciences, physicists were self-archiving since the early '90's; some areas of physics, such as high-energy physics, have a 100% self-archiving rate. The rate for chemists is - er - rather closer to 0%, than 100%. Never mind, though, if the chemists are behind on the green route to OA. There is still plenty of room for leadership on the gold road!

The Imaginary Journal of High-End Chemistry is an ad hoc thought experiment, designed to answer the question, what is the ballpark cost of producing an electronic-only, stricly open access journal article, in the priciest high-end STM market? The Imaginary Journal is a response to a challenge from academic publisher Lisa Diettrich of Academic Medicine for us poetic visionary OA types to address "the nitty gritty of how we pay for it all". As it happens, if there is anything this particular OA advocate enjoys more than poetic visioning, it is economic modelling. The Imaginary Journal begins to explore a few other poetic economic concepts, such as Work Less, and creative globalization for the good of all, themes which I hope to delve into in more depth in The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics.

Issues of Imaginary Journal can be found on the SPARC Open Access Forum Archive (search for Imaginary Journal). Here are links to each issue:

Many thanks to those who participated in this collaborative experiment, including leaders in the publishing industry (both on and off list - liblicense-l as well as the SPARC Open Access Forum), and chemists.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Saturday, July 30, 2005

There is more - a great deal more - to open access than the most obvious benefit, a tremendous increase in accessibility and impact.

One of the new potentials unleashed by OA is new means for collaboratively working on research and writing. A couple of recent postings from Peter Suber's Open Access News http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html illustrate some of this potential:

Arti K. Rai, Open and Collaborative Research: A New Model for Biomedicine. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=574863, a preprint forthcoming in Robert Hahn (ed.), Intellectual Property Rights inFrontier Industries: Software and Biotech, AEI-Brookings Press.(thanks to David Bollier)

Copyright, http://www.copyrightjournal.org/index.php/Copyright. A new OA journal edited by Lawrence Lessig and Michael Geist, among others, is intended to be both a traditional, peer-reviewed journal and a novel, collaborative approach to journal creation. Scholarly communications and open access are among the topics to be covered -perhaps a publishing opportunity for readers of this list?

In my opinion, this more formal approach to collaboration is a natural outgrowth of the greatly enhanced opportunities for informal collaboration made possible by the electronic medium and the world wide web. Scholars have always communicated informally as well as formally - by talking at metings, conferences, etc. - it's just that e-mail, listservs, blogs, wikis, etc., have expanded the potential for this kind of cooperation.

Could this be a more major change in scholarly communications than either the shift from print to electronic, or from closed to open access?

thoughts?

Heather G. Morrison

Originally posted to the SPARC Open Access Forum, SCHOLCOMM, and ERIL-L, July 30, 2005.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics began as a place to gather some of my writings, both formal and informal, on the topic of open access, at the request of friends.

The main focus of this blog is open access, and scholarly communications in general. The concept of poetic economics, however, can be applied to any field of endeavour. This idea is to think of economics as a means to strive for the best we can achieve on this earth; to begin with poetic vision, and use our knowledge of how things work as a poet uses words, to create beauty and meaning.

As of 2004 when this blog started, most of my writings on this subject were originally listserv postings. Only some of these writings have been gathered. More can be found in the listserv discussions, on the SPARC Open Access Forum, SCHOLCOMM, ERIL-L, Liblicense-L, the American Scientist Open Access Forum and its successor GOAL. What I have liked about the lists is the interactivity, the opportunity to discuss and debate, particularly with those who do not necessarily share my views.

As of 2012, I find that I participate much less in listserv discussions, and am not convinced of the usefulness of discussions via blog commenting. For this reason, while commenting on IJPE is sometimes turned on, I do not encourage it.

Sunday, July 17, 2005

In Lieu of Flowers: An Open Letter to the American Association of Cancer Research

According to the SPARC Open Access News of July 13, AACR is one of a group that has signed a letter on July 7 to Senator Arlen Specter, expressing "significant concerns about the National Institutes of Health duplicating private sector on-line publishing".

The banner at the top of your website this morning does not say: defending the interests of the private sector in the publishing industry.

What your banner says is quite different. It is "Saving Lives Through Research".

This is a noble reason for the existence of your association. My request is that AACR review its mission, and reconsider its position on the NIH Public Access Policy. I cannot see how such a review could possibly come to any other conclusion than that your mission compels you to fully support and participate in Public Access.

Change is difficult for anyone, and I have no doubt that the small changes needed for Public Access will be a little bit uncomfortable for your association. I urge you, however, to consider how many families, not only in the U.S. but throughout the world - have asked for donations to cancer research in lieu of flowers. How many have wanted to set aside their own comforts in bereavement to speed the research, so that others would be spared the agony that they and their loved ones went through. When so many are seeing the need to speed the research and placing it above their own comfort, surely your association can, too.

Surely you realize that the best way to "accelerate the dissemination of new research findings" - to borrow a phrase from your mission statement - is for cancer researchers to share their findings as openly as possible, as soon as possible. The ideal is to post the findings openly on the web, just as soon as the quality control process (peer review) is complete - generally before publication. Imposing any delay, or any restrictions on dissemination, is contrary to your mission statement.

Your mission also says that you will "advance the understanding of cancer etiology, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment throughout the world." Outside the wealthy nations, there are many universities with no journal subscriptions at all; and, many places where lack of funds to purchase resources is a deterring factor to education, period. Participating in the NIH Public Access program clearly advances your mission. Lack of access is a factor in the U.S. too, of course; not all states are equally wealthy, and not all can afford all the journals for their university libraries.

Please share this message with your Board, and your members. If your basic mission has changed from saving lives to private sector profits, your mission statement needs updating. If your mission continues to be to accelerate cancer research, then you need to reverse your stance on the NIH's Public Access Policy, from opposition to enthusiastic support and participation.

To facilitate dissemination and encourage other associations to consider their missions when thinking about open access, this is an open letter, copied to the SPARC Open Access Forum.

I congratulate the U.S. National Institute of Health and the U.S. Senate for their support for Public Access. This is one policy area where many, myself included, see the United States as providing an example of visionary leadership, which other nations would be well advised to follow.

best wishes,

Heather G. Morrison

cc: Senator Arlen Specter, SPARC Open Access Forum

Mission and PurposesThe mission of the Association is to prevent and cure cancer through research, education, and communication. The purposes are to foster research in cancer and related biomedical science; accelerate the dissemination of new research findings among scientists and others dedicated to the conquest of cancer; promote science education and training; and advance the understanding of cancer etiology, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment throughout the world.from: American Association of Cancer Research website, July 17, 2005http://www.aacr.org/page3831.aspx

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ca/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, US

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

There are two reasons why it is in the publishers' best interests to provide the author with a final, peer-reviewed, proof-read copy for the institutional repository (which need not be the final pdf). First and most important, this will ensure that readers are not confused and potentially misled by different versions - the formatting might be different, but the content will be just as authoritative.

Secondly, this makes it possible for publishers to include a link to the journal in the authors' final copy, which, I would suggest, is in the publishers' best interest. Authors will be pointing people to their institutional repository and/or other open access copies, simply because this is more convenient.

This is much more convenient for the author than assembling a list of links to a variety of publisher and conference websites. It's no wonder that the authors who publish the most are the first to move to self-archiving, as Dr. Swan's recent research has uncovered.

If a publisher were to provide me with a final proof-read copy, complete with bibliographic citation information and a link to the journal, that would be very convenient for me, and I would be very much inclined to submit this version to the IR.

cheers,

Heather G. Morrison

They hang the man and flog the womanThat steal the goose from off the common.But let the greater villain looseThat steals the common from the goose.-Folk poem, circa 1764from: David Bollier. Reclaiming the American Commons. http://www.bollier.org/reclaim.htm

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. To view a copy of this license, visithttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ca/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.

Originally posted to the SPARC Open Access Forum, July 12, 2005.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

The Society for Reproduction and Fertility has developed a Free Access policy which is noteworthy for publishers considering a transition to open access. Highlights include re-use rights on payment of the Free Access fee, and an embargo of only 6 months for authors making use of the free self-archiving option.

Copyright remains yours - Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, 2000. The copyright statement from the ALPSP, part of their Learned Publishing License to Publish, could stand as a role model for publishers today (2008). This statement clarifies authors' rights to reuse their own work, including posting on public servers such as institutional and disciplinary repositories, and clarifies the publisher's right to defend the intellectual property rights of authors.

Kudos to Oxford: Transitioning to Open Access. Oxford continues to lead the way for traditional publishers to transition to open access, providing discounts to authors of subscribing institutions, a new consortial author discount program, and fee adjustments reflecting open access charges revenue for the third year in a row.

WIPO Launches New Agenda on IP and DevelopmentAt the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), developing nations have taken the lead on restoring balance in intellectual property law, including a draft Access to Knowledge (A2K) treaty that includes open access provisions. Library associations, including the International Federation of Library Associations and the Association of Research Libraries, among others, have supported the development agenda.

People's Open Access Education Initiative. Links to an initiative developed by and for people in developing countries, to overcome barriers to education using open source and open access philosophies and resources. It is hoped that this will be a first step towards a People's Open Access University.

E-LIS: the Open Archive for Library and Information Science. E-LIS is not only the world's largest archive for library and information science: it is also a global collaboration of volunteers from over 40 countries. Searching E-LIS first is highly recommended, not only for high quality of searching and results, but because an E-LIS search yields a result with a far greater breadth of perspective than our traditional search resources.

Canada: let's focus on sharing. In our trade relationships with others, let's think about more than our own economic interests. When it comes to intellectual property, let's encourage the same balance of rights between users and creators we want in our own intellectual property, and let us also think about traditional knowledge rights, too. When working with developing countries, let us consider not only what is in our own economic interests, but what is best for them, too. Why talk only about free trade, and not fair trade too?

Chemists Without Borders Open Chemistry Position Statement. The Chemists Without Borders statement illustrates why open access and open source science should be priority for every "without borders" group. In the short term, let us help the developing world; in the long term, let us make sure everyone has access to all of the world's knowledge. Who knows, perhaps someday those are poor now, will be in a position to help us.

A non-US non-UK Perspective on OA (Open Access). Presentation. Open Access is a global phenomenon. If anything, the barriers are highest in the US and the UK. Without a profitable scholarly publishing industry, there is nothing to lose - and everything to gain - from open access.

An open access model with potential to faciliate global economic stability and equity.An open access model focusing on local (or highly distributed) publishing could be an effective means to facilitate global economic stability and equity. The costs of publication are always borne in one's own currency. The correlation between ability to do research and obligation to pay for publishing is direct and linear. All that is needed is simple policy; the rest takes care of itself. An elegant, poetic model to move us all forward towards equity.

Access to Knowledge (A2K) / WIPO Development Agenda
Internationally, the most creative globalization initiative I'm aware of is the Access to Knowledge (A2K) Treaty. The goal of A2K is "access to knowledge for all people".

In 2004, Brazil and Argentina led an initiative to move the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in the direction of a development agenda. The WIPO development agenda is supported by many countries and organizations. To find out what is going on, and how to support A2K as the world prepares for the fall 2005 WIPO General Assembly, go to the Access to Knowledge web page.

Thanks to Peter Suber's Open Access News for ongoing updates on the WIPO Development Agenda and A2K.

The African Commons Encyclopedia is a wiki-based "living conceptual map of the people, projects and processes that contribute to the development of shared, networked knowledge across the African continent." Thanks to Peter Suber's Open Access News, Sept. 1, 2005.

International cooperation & digital libraries
Sridhar, V., interview with David S. Magier. We need libraries more than ever Frontline, Volume 22 - Issue 17, Aug 13 - 26, 2005.
Excerpt: "The digital medium, particularly the Internet, offers new possibilities for scholars and library professionals. But this hinges crucially on international cooperation in preserving, conserving and organising library collections so that they can be shared by users globally. The Centre for South Asian Libraries (CSAL) is an example of such a collaborative venture. Unlike the colonial model, which resulted in collections being carted away from India, it works on the principle that by using digital technologies, material can be accessed by Western scholars without having to appropriate them physically. Sharing is thus a key word in this model.". Thanks to Peter Suber's Open Access News , Monday, August 15, 2005.